Dream Book Design

Cleaning Hardwood Floors

Ok, I must admit before I write anything that I hate, hate, hate, cleaning our floors. I seriously could spend a whole day cleaning our house and be so happy about it, but if I have to spend 1-2 hours cleaning our floors I get in the worst mood. I’ve come up with a couple of reasons as to why I hate it so much, here they are:

  1. I could clean them every three days and they would still look like a disaster in the mean time.
  2. I feel as though I have to do twice the cleaning because of our method {which I’ll share in a sec.}, but it’s the only way that seems to really get ours clean.
  3. I feel like I could clean so much more of our house in the time that it takes me to clean just the floors. Seriously, I could clean our WHOLE house in the time that the floors alone take!
  4. It used to be J’s only job when it comes to cleaning {other than “trash duty” if that counts} but now I took it over because my work is a whole lot slower than his is.
  5. I have to make sure that I clean the baseboards, wainscotting, and trim before I do the floors, otherwise I end up getting that dust and dirt all over ALL over again!
Now if you are sitting here reading and just not “getting” it as to how someone could hate cleaning their floors so much, here is a pretty little example for you as to what they can look like from just one afternoon of rain:
Yep, those are all muddy paw prints, that get everywhere. The floor, rugs, couch, etc. We definitely try to watch them come in from when its raining and clean off their paws, but that definitely doesn’t stop it from happening!
Heres how we clean these beauties:
  • Vacuum, yep, vacuum all the floors, tile and wood. Now for this we don’t just scoot by with the Dyson vacuum, we bust out the attachments as well to really get in to the tight corners! To be honest with you it is about time that we invested in a new vacuum cleaner as our old one has definitely seen better days! A friend of mine has suggested that we check out this guide to the Six Best Canister Vacuum Cleaners on The Market for some inspiration. Do you have a favorite vacuum cleaner? I would love to hear your recommendations.
  • Also, before we move on, we vacuum the couch every week as well. Between dogs, friends, and eating on it sometimes, this couch is messy! The only thing that we’ve found to work is using the attachment that has a felt-ish feel. Between the suction and the felt, it picks up almost all the hair and crumbs {eekk, so bad that we even have those on the couch}. I’ve been considering getting a cordless vacuum as I think it would be so much easier to use than a normal handheld one with a long power cord. I’ve been having a look at some appliance review websites to research cordless vacuums here, and on other sites. It’s a great help when others have reviewed the items beforehand. as there are so many vacuum cleaner to choose from I don’t know where to start!
  • After all vacuuming is finished {which I think is the part that takes the longest}, bust out the Bona Hardwood Floor cleaner. This is what our buddy Steve, who installed our wood, recommended. At first we bought a steam mop, and he told us that the mop might split our fresh wood. Im not sure if thats true for all wood, or just ours, but now we just use it for the tiled areas of our home and use Bona Hardwood system on the wood. The steam mop is great in our tiled kitchen. Hopefully, as the wood settles, we’ll be able to use the mop on it but I’m following Steve’s instuctions first.
  • Last but not least, almost cry when minutes later the pups run in with wet and muddy paws and ruin it all. I swear we don’t get much {really- barely ANY} rain here in Phoenix, but somehow our pups paws are always wet and muddy!
These are the steps that seem to work for us, and even though I do loathe {no joke} cleaning the floors, I love when they are all squeaky clean.
I’ll leave y’all with some pictures of the pups so that you can see why we still love them after all they put us through;)
Boomers face=adorable. Honeys butt=not so much.

No joke, this is how they were sleeping the other day,UGH too cute!
For any of you that have hardwood, how do you keep it clean? Any tips or tricks? Also, even if you don’t have hardwood, does anyone out there despise cleaning their floors as much as I do?!? Please tell me i’m not alone in this thought:)
<3,
Adri

Comments

  1. denise says

    same problem over here but my floors are light so it’s not quite as noticeable. I vacuum like a crazy woman, but I’ve let up on the washing part until they are really bad — or until I get to the point where it’s really throwing me over the edge and I have to attack it. I do it on my hands and knees, so maybe that’s why I’ve learned to live with them dirty a little longer than I’d like. Fortunately, I only have 750sf to contend with.

    Boomer is pathetically cute!! The things we put up with for those fur baby faces and unconditional love.

  2. Iris says

    I feel your pain!

    We live in a rented house that has laminated wood flooring throughout. We also have a dog that leaves foot prints. You can’t clean the laminated flooring really wet because then the seams would start to rise up! So, like you, I first vaccum the hell out of everything and then I, kinda-sorta, wet-clean. I used to clean on my hands and knees which just caused one of the little fluid sacks in my knees to burst. So now I have “prepatellar bursitis”, also known as “housemaid’s knee” thanks to that stupid floor. Now I just wet-clean it with a swiffer. I am glad that I am having this floor experience while we live in a rented house so that I can avoid getting this kind of flooring in our own house one day. Word of the day: screw the floor – protect your knees!

  3. Jess says

    I don’t have hardwoods in this house. I did in another house and hated it. I felt the same way you do about almost having to clean it twice with vacuuming and mopping. Right now it is our kitchen floor that I despise.

  4. Amanda says

    We used to have laminate floors and I also hated them – always dirty! But then we moved into a house with carpet and look at me missing those hard floors. Now when the puppy runs in (we have a boxer too) she gets mud all over the carpet – much harder to clean! I don’t think there’s a solution… puppies = messy floors… always.

  5. Anonymous says

    Your babies are too cute! The picture of them sleeping together is adorable. It seems whenever mine are at their most adorable I will move to get my camera and they jump up and ruin my perfect picture. 🙂

    I have hardwood floors over the entire main floor of my house and I swear by Mannington Ultra Clean. I have 7 indoor dogs. Yes you read that right, 7. (I’m a vet in a practice who also does spaying & neutering at our local Humane Society. As a result I am there all the time and I’ve ended up adopting 4 dogs, performing surgery and keeping a dog that a client just wanted to euthanize, and I’ve inherited my sister’s 2 dogs since she deployed.) Mannington does a great job of protecting the floor as well as cleaning. I have no scratches that I have found, and all the dogs are constantly running and sliding on the floor. One of them is a 75 lb Belgian Malinois while the others range from 4 to 40 lbs. To be honest I clean my hardwood floors rarely because Mannington does such a good job protecting. I usually just wipe off muddy pawprints and such with a damp rag and then dry with a towel. I realize this sounds like an infomercial for Mannington, but to be honest I didn’t even realize so many people consider hardwood floors a pain until moving in and having people consistently ooo and ahh over how I keep my hardwood floors looking so good.

  6. Emily says

    i have dark engineered hardwoods that i love for five minutes right after i’m done cleaning them. unfortunately, one of my dogs sheds like a mo-fo, and the white tufts of hair floating around really show up against the dark wood. i also have quite a few dings from sharp little poochie nails. i love the look of hardwoods, but carpet is so much easier to clean!

  7. Jessica Fischer says

    When we had our house in Spokane we had hardwood floors and 2 big dogs. Rain, Snow, yuck yuck!! They would bring EVERYTHING in the house! Here is what we would do. I put a big rug by the back door so that it would ‘hopefullly’ catch most of the wetness/mud from their paws. It helped a LOT. Then I would seriously use a dustmop everyday. It saved me from having to vacuume the floors more than once a week. Then after I did the dustmop I would do a quick clean over the floors. I bought the Method O Mop (like a swiffer but with a microfiber cloth) and the Method squirt + mop wood floor cleaner (http://www.methodhome.com/product/squirt-mop-wood-floor-cleaner/?almond) you can just spot clean really quickly with it.

    I DO agree that Bona is the BEST for wood floors though, but I just remember if I did this everyday to every other day- then the day I ‘really’ cleaned the floors it took a lot less time.

  9. Paizhestar says

    I feel your pain 100% We have 2 boxers and all hardwood floors. Of course we do have 2 rugs, so if the dogs wanna puke or eat something gross they clearly go for the rugs. We also live in NYC so we bring in lots of “city gross” on the bottom of our feet as well. My way to deal with it? Embrace the dirt and dust!

  11. adrianne says

    Thank you all SO much for your ideas. I think I might try a few of them, anything to make it easier! I cant believe how many of you actually clean down on your hands and knees! Im only 24 and that still sounds like WAY too much work! Go you ladies!! Thank you all again..and yes, Boomer is pathetically cute:)
    <3,
    Adri

  14. Cassie says

    This sounds so similar to our system. We live in rainy Washington with two small dogs and wood floors. It’s a disaster. It does make me thankful I don’t have carpet given the amount of hair, mud and dirt drug in.

    I sweep, then vacuum, then use my swiffer sweeper. Depending on how dirty it is, I use my steam mop (I’ve found no problems with it in the year I’ve had it) or just plain wet mop. Then I use our Bruce Hardwood Cleaner over the whole floor and allow to dry. Then I swiffer again. It’s a pain and only last a short amount of time. But I think of it like this. I could be vacuuming carpet to death and steam cleaning THAT once a week. Gross.